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#1
Last night, perusing the internet on unrelated business, I discovered something rather surprising.

Chuck Yeager had died on the 7th of December. Now, that in of itself isn't surprising. The man was 97 years old. It had to happen sometime.

What was surprising, and which angered me no end, was the severe lack of reporting of this event. An hour long general search turned up almost nothing. The news was more interested in some celebrity bint and her relationship issues than more important things that happened on the 7th of December.

Like I dunno...Pearl fucking Harbour, as an example.

The general media gives not one single fuck about history and those that dragged humanity kicking and screaming into the unknown (unless it's on Facebook), but I will not allow that to stand.

So, In Memorandum here because the news cares more about the short term celebrity than the life long legend, I present a 'small' piece on the farm boy turned Brigadier General, Charles 'Chuck' Yeager.

Chuck joined the USAAF 3 months before the official involvement of the USA in WWII as an aircraft mechanic, having been turned down as a pilot because he lacked a college degree. Shortly afterwards, the USAAF relaxed its rules on entry and the then Corporal Yeager earned his wings and a promotion, eventually winding up in a P-51 Mustang squadron in the UK and got shot down over occupied France 4 months later on March 5th, 1944 on only his 8th mission.

Being shot down presented several problems for Yeager. Firstly, he was in occupied France, surrounded by zee Germans. He was picked up by the Free French resistance who helped him return back to the Allies (this being pre-D Day, so that meant getting him over the border to Spain). Along the way he helped them out, using life hacks his father had taught him as a kid on the farm, including how to make home made explosives...

The second issue came upon return to the Allies. There was a standing rule that anyone helped by the resistance was not allowed to over-fly enemy held territory again, in case they were shot down again, captured by the enemy and forced to divulge information about their rescuers from the previous time. This didn't quite ground Yeager, but forced him into air defence duties over the English Channel rather than bomber escort duties into occupied Europe.

Although as luck would have it, D-Day kicked off only 2 weeks after he returned to the UK. Yeager kicked off so much that his protests reached the Supreme Commander Allied Forces (Eisenhower) who agreed with him and others that the resistance by this point were helping out publicly with the invasion already and re-capture would bring no additional risks to them.

Despite his lack of a college education, Yeager proved to be a natural and gifted fighter pilot and later a respected leader of entire air wings. He also possessed incredible eyesight and as a kid could drop deer at 600m using iron sighted rifles, a feat that doesn't sound that impressive until you try it without optics.
Between D-Day and the end of the war, Yeager flew 56 missions, scored another 9 aircraft kills (adding to the 2.5 he already had at this point), including completing the 'ace in one day' achievement (5 kills in one mission. 2 of which he managed without firing a single round of ammunition as a BF-109 he was chasing flew into his wingman, destroying both aircraft) and was one of the first pilots in the USAAF to bring down the new Me262 jet fighter.

His unique set of abilities and qualifications helped him out again post war. As an ex mechanic and a highly experienced combat fighter pilot with exceptional eyesight and a reputation as a natural, calm under pressure flyer, he got a posting as a test pilot flying repaired and experimental aircraft.

His date with the Bell X-1 almost never happened. The original Bell test pilot wouldn't fly the aircraft unless he was paid an absolute shit ton of money to risk going supersonic.
Remember, this is the mid 1940s. Going transonic wasn't a new thing and a lot of aircraft had hit that transitional period (and some claimed to even have broken it in a dive), but 99% of the time, breaking the sound barrier was the start point of a really painful and generally fatal crash.

Yeager was brought in to replace the Bell pilot and immediately painted Glamorous Glennis on the side, something he had done with every single aircraft he flew (I think the X-1 was technically Glamorous Glennis IV) and would keep re-adding the name every time it was painted over by someone.

With broken ribs (he'd fallen off his horse a few days prior) and a 'fuck it, lets do this' attitude (not a lot was known about transonic flight performance. The X-1 was shaped like a bullet, specifically the .50bmg, because it was the only known shape stable at supersonic speeds. Aside from that, they were making it up as they went along), Chuck and Glennis were dropped from the bomb bay of a B-29 Superfortress over the Mojave desert and accelerated under rocket power to Mach 1.05 in level flight on October 14, 1947.
Like I said earlier, many people had claimed to beat him to the accolade. Several German jet and rocket aircraft (the Me262 and Me 163) apparently did it. The poor bastard that first flew the Bachem Ba 349 apparently was supersonic, right before he crashed (unconscious) into the ground. There was even a guy that apparently did it 30 minutes before Yeager in an F-86 Sabre.
None of these count, for 3 reasons
  1. None of these were in level flight. Using gravity to help is cheating.
  2. None of these were recorded and verified using precise instruments. The speed of sound is a very fickle number and changes slightly depending on things like air density and ambient temperature.
  3. Some of them were accidental. The Ba 349 most likely was supersonic, nose down in an uncontrolled dive.
Yeager was the first to do so that fit these conditions and to do so intentionally.

This feat didn't earn him the fuck ton of money his predecessor wanted, but did earn him the kind of fame that money couldn't buy. He stayed with the programme, test flew the MiG 15, was involved in the X-1A (which was designed to break Mach 2) and flew chase for the first supersonic woman.

One of the last things Chuck did as a test pilot was to troll the US Navy's attempt at the fastest aircraft on Earth. 2 weeks after the US Navy program cracked Mach 2 and just before they were able to celebrate the achievement, Chuck achieved Mach 2.44 in level flight in the X-1A.

And then things went wrong.

You know that bit in SFS/KSP, where you're burning really really fast in atmosphere and then suddenly your craft starts tumbling out of control? This is called inertial coupling. In simple terms, it means the mass of the object exceeds its drag and the control provided by the aerodynamic surfaces and the craft reverses direction in flight. It's one reason why you're always getting bleated at about TWR and why your sub-orbital speed record rockets rolled over all the time.
In 2020 SFS, it's a case of re-load the quicksave, put a bad review on Google Play Store and never play the game again. In 1953, this was still a theoretical phenomena. It hadn't been studied much and very very few pilots lived to make a report afterwards.
This happened to Chuck Yeager at 80,000ft doing just shy of two and a half times the speed of sound. He promptly fell 51,000ft in under 60 seconds before finally re-gaining control at 29,000ft (in real terms, about 25 seconds before hitting the ground) and flew the aircraft back to base without further incident.

Afterwards, he returned to his fighter pilot roots and was posted to command Sabre and Super Sabre squadrons before being promoted to Colonel and placed in charge of the programme to train astronauts in the 1960s. This was a bit of a bittersweet posting for him. It meant he was involved in the Space Race, commanding the unit that trained astronauts like Neil Armstrong (whom he get stuck in a field with after a trial landing on a 'dry' lake), but could never be an astronaut himself because yet again he lacked the 'right stuff'. A college degree.

His test flying came to an end in '63 after crashing a rocket assisted F-104 Starfighter but was still heavily involved in the X-15 programme, though never flew it.

Posted back to the USAF in 1966, he took over an entire air wing and flew nearly 130 missions in the Vietnam War and took several postings around Germany and the US before making Brigadier General in 1969 and retired from the US Air Force in 1975.

Sort of.

Annually, the USAF would let him break the sound barrier, doing it for the last time solo in an F-15 Eagle (complete with Glamorous Glennis adorned on the side) in 1997, 7 years after the death of his wife Glennis and 50 years after doing it for the first time in 1947.

He did it again in 2012 at 89 years old as a back seater in another F-15 Eagle for the 65th anniversary.

Despite his death being roundly ignored in the current press, his life achievements basically involve making every single pilot, aerospace and experimental flight hall of fame list, by anyone, ever.
Breaking the sound barrier, recovering the X-1A incident and his wartime exploits earned him lots of medals and accolades, some unique to him, including a bridge in West Virginia named for him after he flew under it and a silver presidential medal said to be equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honour.
Some, especially in the US, consider him the best pilot in the world. I personally think that might be a bit much, but certainly the best the US ever produced. He flew over 360 different aircraft types, totalled 10,000 hours flight time, got involved in 3 wars, shot down 11 aircraft, became the fastest man in Earth twice, trained the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle astronauts and helped investigate the Challenger disaster.

Not bad for a farm boy.

February 13, 1923 to 7 December 2020.​
 

Blazer Ayanami

Space Shuttle enthusiast // Retired Admin
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#3
Chuck is one of those guys that made mankind advance, simply because he took the step forward, without considering the consequences, and that not many people remembers.

Sadly, there are many other “forgotten heroes” in the history of Aviation and Spaceflight. Yuri and Neil were the lucky ones, cause almost everyone knows them.

But what about the Wright brothers, for example? They were the the first to build a controllable and reliable aircraft.

What about Charles Lindbergh? He was the first to fly alone across the Atlantic on his “Spirit of Saint Louis”.

What about Amelia Earhart, the most notorious female pilot ever?

What about Laika, the first living being in orbit and the first death in orbit? Sadly, today, barely no one talks about her.

(Just some quick examples)

So yes, many of the progress we’ve achieved today in Aviation and Spaceflight is because of those forgotten brave ones that barely no one remembers. Only people like us remember the great effort they made, and courage required to do what they did. So, yes, thank you, Chuck Yeager, and others.